This conference has made it painfully clear that the term Enterprise 2.0 has no discernible value at all. The label simply means everything and nothing all at once. It has become a something that people want to add to their recipes.

Microsoft became Enterprise 2.0 this morning and it is the biggest load of bullshit I have heard in ages (and News.com goes and gushes over it).

I am sitting here in a session, which has a great panel (including Ross Mayfield), and I am sure that if you asked for everyone who was an Enterprise 2.0 expert to raise their hand, the whole room would jump out of their seat with their hand in the air.

I know I couldn’t raise my hand. Could you?

I have been working on bringing social computing in to enterprises for almost 5 years, and guys like Euan have been at it longer. Fantastic minds have been thinking about it for years, and every one of those people, who I regard as the real experts — they are all the first to admit that they are not experts. We don’t know anything, we just know that we need to find ways to give up control.

Enterprise 2.0, the term, isn’t about giving up, it’s not about seeing your organization in a new way, it’s not about happier and more fulfilled people. The term now means technology.

The idea that you can take a particular piece of software and put it in to an enterprise and that it will make your company better, or more efficient, or more profitable, is a very industrial mentality.

7 thoughts on “I am cutting Enterprise 2.0 from my vocabulary”

This would be interesting to talk about when you get back. We all had to expect that the tool vendors would jump all over this. Remember when it was Office 2.0? I kinda feel that having major vendor support will help adoption of real implementations. I mean if everyone is asking for hamburgers imagine how good your steak is going to look. Maybe a bad metaphor but I’m kinda hungry.

It seems to be a fame game – whoever can create a term that gets picked up, they get some degree of glory for it.

You’re right of course, the term Enterprise 2.0 is about technology, not people. The products are enablers for collaborative working, nothing more, nothing less. Lets keep the emphasis human and cut the term Enterprise 2.0 out of our discussions…

I agree with your skepticism of those who claim expertise in such a short period of time. But Enterprise 2.0 is becoming shorthand for business adoption of social technologies. Your clients are just beginning to ‘get it,’ if they’re anything like mine…

Rather than wiping it from your vocabulary, we invite you to join the Enterprise 2.0 Uncoalition – which simply states we must put people first, and that technology for technology’s sake is never sustainable.